It was difficult to decide today whether to write about Donald Rumsfeld’s personal responsibility for torture at Abu Ghraib or the link between omega-3 fatty acids and violence. I’m going with the fish.

Studies at the National Institutes of Health and at prisons in the US, UK, and the Netherlands indicate that prisoners given nutritional supplements of fish oil show fewer violent tendencies. The clinical trial of 80 people in the US follows an earlier, smaller study that showed a reduction by one third of anger, hostility, and irritability. So, prisons are doing their own experiments and finding a reduction in violent incidents.

It’s just predictable biochemistry. Your brain is (60%) fat and it needs fats from outside your body to function. Chips, cookies, and ice cream all have fats, but they tend to be omega-6 fatty acids from seed oils. Those don’t help.  Your synapses

contain even higher concentrations of essential fatty acids - being made of about 60% of the omega-3 fatty acid DHA. . . . Omega-3 DHA is very long and highly flexible. When it is incorporated into the nerve cell membrane it helps make the membrane itself elastic and fluid so that signals pass through it efficiently.

Without efficient transmission you get suicidal, angry, and impulsive. Sound like anyone you know?

Apparently, omega-3s have helped children and criminals. Maybe it is the emphasis on foods like pretzels and chicken tenders that makes the Bush administration so violent. Let’s experiment on them. Let’s give them multivitamins and fish oil to see if it prevents any violent, criminal behavior. You know where they are.

The White House
1600 Pennsylvania Avenue NW
Washington, DC 20500

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This time Charlie Rangel (D-NY) is serious about reinstating the draft. He says it is a matter of fairness. Thomas Jefferson agreed. It is probably no surprise, however, that students don’t tend to agree. Students involved in Nonmilitary Options for Youth in Austin, Texas, asked high school students how they would solve the problem faced by the all-volunteer army.

If most young people are adamantly opposed to universal military conscription, and if some understand the unfairness of the de facto draft we have now, what is the solution?

Students suggest that answers may be found in what schools have taught all along: “I think we should handle things in a nonviolent grown-up way.” “We should be big enough to reach an agreement with our enemies and settle it like civilized human beings.” “I think that people who think war is the best option are completely lazy; there are so many more options!” One student concluded simply, “I believe that the best way to make peace is with peace.”

College students at Campus Progress have been weighing in, too. Some say no way to the draft, others favor joining the Israeli Army (!). Then comes the response that suggesting joining any army is no way to run a progressive website.

I like the alternatives offered by the high school students. I am not crazy about the draft. I do think it would be completely fair to have mandatory national service, though. National service doesn’t necessarily mean serving in the military. No, that’s not an idea that is making me excited either. I don’t know. I don’t know.

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I think it’s safe to say that we can’t rely on the federal government (especially any part of the government administered by the executive branch) for accurate science.

Health and Human Services Secretary Mike Leavitt choose a physician with experience in Christian pregnancy counseling (no contraceptives and discouragement of abortion) to oversee federal reproductive health programs. That’s just the kind of horrible irony they are so good at.

We face a serious environmental situation, both from peak oil and from global warming. You know that, and I know that. Yet, in August the Environmental Protection Agency closed their libraries in order to be fiscally responsible. They didn’t just close the libraries to the public but to their own employees. Now that is selective fiscal responsibility. The whole situation is difficult to fathom. The EPA even claims that they that they have no authority to regulate emissions. Fortunately, twelve states, several cities and more than a dozen environmental groups are challenging the decision. This case will be heard by the Supreme Court. That may not fill you with hope, but it’s better than no hearing at all.

I know, the war between the Bush Administration and science is not new. These have just been a few stories in the news over the past couple of weeks. Here are a few more from the past few years.

• August 2003, Committee on Government Reform Minority Office
  Investigating the State of Science under the Bush Administration
• February 18, 2004, Wired News
  Bush Distorts Science, Kristen Philipkoski
• February 19, 2004, The Nation
  The Junk Science of George W. Bush, Robert F. Kennedy Jr
• March 15, 2004, CSICOP
  The New Science Wars, Chris Mooney
• March 22, 2005, The Guardian UK
  For Bush, science is a dirty work, Tristram Hunt
• June 30, 2005, US News & World Report
  Scientists and Bush Administration at Odds, Thomas Hayden
• June 30, 2006, CBS, 60 Minutes
  Rewriting the Science

Update 12/2: A BuzzFlash alert notes that the new House Democratic leaders are already addressing the EPA’s library closings, at this point through a relatively strongly worded letter to cease destruction and disposition of library holdings.

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Listening to Seymour Hersch this morning on Democracy Now made so much news I read and listen to seem like the playful circus it is. This goes far beyond Hersch’s article this week on the likelihood of the U.S. going to war with Iran. In talking to Amy Goodman, Hersch connects dots and brings a knowledge of the past political generation that many may not be familiar with. This is no sound byte with a smile. Hersch takes the time to weave together threads of conduct of the Reagan administration during the Iran-Contra era with the two Bush administrations in their Middle East wars.

I would gladly trade 24-hour fake news for a few hours weekly with my copy of The New Yorker.

If you read only two stories this week, make them Seymour Hersch’s New Yorker article “The Next Act” and a little AP story on a review of 866 studies relating to climate change. What else matters?

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Do you depend on net neutrality to make connections to other people, to learn what is going on in the world, to express yourself, or even to make a living? Maybe you don’t know whether you depend on net neutrality or you don’t know exactly what it is. If you run a small business and depend on search engine traffic or you reach others with your thoughts through a noncorporate site, believe me, you depend on net neutrality.

Please consider joining the Coalition to Save the Internet. Just read the Statement of Principles, and join.

Now that we have a better idea of the make up of the new Congress, we can work to maintain net neutrality with new telecommunications policy. Learn about it now, follow the issue and talk to others, and don’t be caught by surprise when the issue comes up in legislation. While you are at it, see where you Senator stands. If they stand on the side of big telecommunications companies, let them know what you think of that.

• Net Neutrality Showdown roundup of news and issues on c|net.
• Google’s Guide to Net Neutrality.
• Wikipedia article on Net Neutrality includes links to the fake grassroots sites that make this sound like a libertarian hands-off-my-internet issue—funded by telecommunications monsters, of course.I love Wikipedia. I want to kiss it all over.

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